Online Library of Liberty: the Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 Ed.)
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The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) [1885] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. This title is also part of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 1,000 books and quotes about liberty and power, and is available free of charge upon request. The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books and web sites is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, in present day Iraq. To find out more about Liberty Fund, Inc., or the Online Library of Liberty Project, please contact the Director at [email protected]. LIBERTY FUND, INC. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 Online Library of Liberty: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) Edition Used: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays, ed. Eric Mack (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1978). Author: Auberon Herbert Editor: Eric Mack About This Title: A collection of essays by a leading late-19th century radical individualist and follower of the ideas of Herbert Spencer. Herbert discusses the moral problems of state coercion, especially when applied to state education, and outlines the principles of “voluntaryism”. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/591 Online Library of Liberty: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/591 Online Library of Liberty: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) Table Of Contents Eric Mack, Introduction Selective Bibliography Essay One. the Choices Between Personal Freedom and State Protection Essay Two. State Education: a Help Or Hindrance? Essay Three. a Politician In Sight of Haven Essay Four. the Right and Wrong of Compulsion By the State Essay Five. the Ethics of Dynamite Essay Six. Salvation By Force Essay Seven. Lost In the Region of Phrases Essay Eight. Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine Essay Nine. a Plea For Voluntaryism Essay Ten. the Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/591 Online Library of Liberty: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) [Back to Table of Contents] ERIC MACK, INTRODUCTION This collection of essays makes available the major and representative writings in political philosophy of one of the distinctive figures in the profound and wide-ranging intellectual debate which took place during the late Victorian age. It was during this period, in the intellectual and social ferment of the 1880s and 1890s, that Auberon Herbert (1838-1906) formulated and expounded voluntaryism, his system of “thorough” individualism. Carrying natural rights theory to its logical limits, Herbert demanded complete social and economic freedom for all noncoercive individuals and the radical restriction of the use of force to the role of protecting those freedoms—including the freedom of peaceful persons to withhold support from any or all state activities. All cooperative activity, he argued, must be founded upon the free agreement of all those parties whose rightful possessions are involved. Auberon Herbert was by birth and marriage a well-placed member of the British aristocracy. He was educated at Eton and at St. John's College, Oxford. As a young man he held commissions in the army for several years and served briefly with the Seventh Hussars in India (1860). On his return to Oxford he formed several Conservative debating societies, was elected a Fellow of St. John's, and lectured occasionally in history and jurisprudence. In 1865, as a Conservative, he unsuccessfully sought a seat in the House of Commons. By 1868, however, he was seeking a parliamentary seat, again unsuccessfully, as a Liberal. Finally, in 1870, Herbert successfully contested a by-election and entered the Commons as a Liberal representing Nottingham. Most notably, during his time in the House of Commons, Herbert joined Sir Charles Dilke in declaring his republicanism and Herbert supported Joseph Arch's attempts to form an agricultural laborer's union. Although, through hindsight, many of Herbert's actions and words during the sixties and early seventies can be read as harbingers of his later consistent libertarianism, he actually lacked, throughout this period, any consistent set of political principles. During this period, for instance, he supported compulsory state education—albeit with strong insistence on its being religiously neutral. In late 1873 Herbert met and was much impressed by Herbert Spencer. As he recounts in “Mr. Spencer and the Great Machine,” a study of Spencer led to the insight that thinking and acting for others had always hindered, not helped, the real progress; that all forms of compulsion deadened the living forces in a nation; that every evil violently stamped out still persisted, almost always in a worse form, when driven out of sight, and festered under the surface. I no longer believed that the handful of us—however well-intentioned we might be—spending our nights in the House, could manufacture the life of a nation, could endow it out of hand with happiness, wisdom, and prosperity, and clothe it in all the virtues.1 However, it was even before this intellectual transformation that Herbert had decided, perhaps out of disgust with party politics or uncertainty about his own convictions, not to stand for reelection in 1874. Later, in 1879, he again sought Liberal support to PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/591 Online Library of Liberty: The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays (1978 ed.) regain a seat from Nottingham. But at that point his uncompromising individualist radicalism was not acceptable to the majority of the Central Council of the Liberal Union of Nottingham. In the interim, 1877, he had organized the Personal Rights and Self-Help association. And in 1878 he had been one of the chief organizers of the antijingoism rallies in Hyde Park against war with Russia. Along with other consistent classical liberals, Herbert repeatedly took anti-imperialist stands. He called for Irish self-determination. He opposed British intervention in Egypt and later opposed the Boer War. In 1880 following his rejection by the Liberals of Nottingham, Herbert turned to the publication of addresses, essays, and books in defense of consistent individualism and against all forms of political regimentation. Even in 1877 he had been disturbed by “a constant undertone of cynicism” in the writings of his mentor, Herbert Spencer, and had resolved to do full justice to “the moral side” of the case for a society of fully free and voluntarily cooperative individuals.2 And while Spencer grew more and more crusty, conservative, and pessimistic during the last decades of the nineteenth century, Herbert, who continued to think of himself as Spencer's disciple, remained idealistic, radical, and hopeful. And though he refused to join, he willingly addressed such organizations as the Liberty and Property Defense League which he felt to be “a little more warmly attached to the fair sister Property than … to the fair sister Liberty.”3 Similarly, Herbert held himself separate from the Personal Rights Association, whose chief mover, J. H. Levy, favored compulsory taxation for the funding of state protective activities. With the exception of the individualistic “reasonable anarchists,” Herbert thought of himself as occupying the left wing of the individualist camp, that is, the wing most willing to carry liberty furthest.4 In 1885 Herbert sought to establish the Party of Individual Liberty and under this rubric gave addresses across England. The title essay for this collection, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, was written as a statement of the basis for, the character of, and the implications of, the principles of this party. Again with the aim of advancing libertarian opinion, Herbert published the weekly (later changed to monthly) paper Free Life, “The Organ of Voluntary Taxation and the Voluntary State,” from 1890 to 1901. Free Life was devoted to “One Fight More—The Best and the Last,” the fight against the aggressive use of force which is “a mere survival of barbarism, a mere perpetuation of slavery under new names, against which the reason and moral sense of the civilized world have to be called into rebellion.”5 Also during the 1890s, Herbert engaged in lengthy published exchanges with two prominent socialists of his day, E.